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A major part of the collection is von Meck's autobiography (660 p.), covering up to the latter part of World War II, when she left Russia for the West. This autobiography primarily discusses her life in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s; her father was executed and she herself was imprisoned in Soviet concentration camps. There are five brief essays discussing railroads in Russia and the USSR, and a photograph of her grandmother, Anna Merkling. Also icluded is von Meck's translation of 681 letters written by P.I. Tchaikovsky to his family during the period March 1861 to September 1893.

Papers consist of diaries, documents, and photographs. Most of the diaries are from the post-war period; a few concern the 1917 Revolution and World War II. There are many photographs from the interwar Soviet Union, when Gavrilov lived in Stalingrad. Among the documents are Gavrilov's personal documents from the Soviet period, from the Second World War, and from the post-war years, when he was a displaced person in Germany.

Correspondence, manuscripts, documents, photographs, subject files, drawings and printed material of the Vserossiiskii zemskii soiuz (All Russian Zemstvo Union). The correspondence, spanning the years 1920-1944, is for the most part addressed to Porfirii N. Sorokin, Executive Secretary of the organization's Vremennyi glavnyi komitet (Temporary Executive Committee), the coordinating unit for all the institutions of the Zemstvo Union. The manuscripts include writings by N. I. Astrov, V. D. Kuz'min-Karavaev, and others. The documents are almost exclusively minutes of the Temporary Executive Committee's meetings from the period 1919-1924. The photographs, for the most part unidentified, are of Russian refugee settlements and White Army encampments in the area of Constantinople and Gallipoli, ca. 1921. The subject files include some financial records, and the printed material include the Vserossiiskii zemskii soiuz bulletin from 1916-1921 as well as publications about the Rossiiskii Zemsko-gorodskoi komitet and the Vserossiiskii soiuz gorodov.